The harder way, but it's my way

Returning to the roots.

I’ve emerged from the depths of a pastry production job meant for two people but somehow fulfilled by just me¹ to say hi. My restaurant job took a lot from me, including years off my life. Then, last week, I was unexpectedly informed they can no longer afford to pay my salary. Labor cost is too high, I was told. “Nonessential² pastry is the first to go.

I was offered a paltry hourly rate to continue doing the same amount of work I’d been asking for help with since July. In just four months, my restaurant pastry chef era is effectively over after this week. Instead of finding work in another pastry kitchen and causing pain to my psyche from having to answer to someone else (lol), I’m choosing to return instead to my independent baker roots³. The harder way, but it’s my way.

As ever, I look to the planets to get a deeper understanding of the moment. I was just a girl reading the Lifestyle section of my grandparent’s subscription to the San Jose Mercury News, racing home from school to learn about myself via the supposed wisdom attached to “Leo.” The planets have always helped me carve a path towards understanding and empathy for the life swirling in my interiority and far outside of myself.

According to the sky and Chani, I’m currently going through my Mars return. Mars has returned to the same sign and degree it was in when I was born (Scorpio; 19°). The planet of conflict, aggression, passion, assertion, obsession, is domicile in Scorpio, meaning that even though Mars is ruled by fire sign Aries it’s dually comfortable in the oceanic depths of Scorpio. Right now, during the return, my Mars placement is being reinforced, activated.

This is great news for my work-related drive and relentlessness, of which I have in spades. The flip side is dealing with all this intensity, though I view my own ferociousness towards my work as a net good. It seems even the sky is telling me a return back to both Mars’ energy and independent work is right where I ought to be.

Not to end this abruptly, but I did have other news and updates to share (the whole reason I was finally able to write a newsletter again). Below, a list:

• Due to the weirdness of 2025, expect issue 2 of Panadería to go up for preorder in early 2026. Preorders will be linked in this newsletter before anywhere else.

• I closed my At Heart cake books just two weeks ago for this restaurant job as it had become increasingly difficult to do both, but I’m accdepting orders once again. I had hoped for a much longer cake break, more brain space to work on the zine and other writing and research projects I’m committing to (😈 I will say a cookbook editor and VP of a major publishing house reaching out to me about potentially working together really helped me to cope with restaurant bullshit), not to mention a break from the admin tasks I often loathe. Oh well!!!

• I’ll be in Philadelphia the first weekend of November popping up at THE Downtime Bakery, my friend Dayna Evans’ spot that was just awarded Best Bakery in Philly. Also will be taking the train to New York one day to eat at Elbow Bread and buy cookbooks. The At Heart x Downtime pop up hasn’t officially been announced yet, but keep the first Sunday of November 2025 open if you’re in the area!

• I spoke with Chloe-Rose Crabtree, pastry chef at Bake Street in London, writer, and historian of food/identity, back in August for the SOURCED Journeys Audio Series. We talked about working with sugar, mostly, but I was just grateful to have the opportunity to chat with a smart baker-writer about our line of work.

• I contributed a strawberry atole cake recipe for Cake Zine’s newest Forbidden Fruit issue. In the headnote I pay tribute to strawberry field workers who work in brutal conditions to get the beloved berry in grocery stores and on our plates.

• Currently reading: All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, by Ruby Tandoh, and the LARB Quarterly, no. 46: Alien.

Some of the last cakes I made before closing my books (not knowing I'd have to reopen them mere weeks later); me.

1. The first assistant I had quit mid-shift the first week of July, leaving me in a shitty situation that got worse over time. I spent the next two weeks training a new (better, but part-time) assistant and having three days off during the entire month, not including my 41st birthday. My suffering ended up being for nothing!! but at least a lot of people got to eat delicious pan dulce for a short time?

2. It is a part of At Heart’s mission to be a living, breathing example of how frivolous indulgences such as morning pastry, mid-afternoon cake slices, pan dulce for dessert can actually be very necessary for a life well lived, for a world well fought. And I say this distinctly NOT in a sickening and irresponsible “Let them eat cake” tone (if a certain popular picnic comes to mind…) that blinds one to the ways in which food and hunger is used as a means of perpetuating atrocities like genocide. AND as a misuse of the meaning of community. That is never how I mean it. What I mean is this: why can’t silly pastry represent a way towards imagining and then creating, through menu and pricing options—how the entire damn operation is run, a different, more just, and better world for everyone?

3. It is a privilege to be able to walk away from much less pay and return to self-employment. I don’t come from a family with money; my husband doesn’t either nor is he independently wealthy. This choice means that financially, things will be more challenging. I want to enjoy my life though, and I’m happiest working for myself. Support and validation comes in from Chani Nicholas and her book You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance: “Your identity is an asset that helps you to support yourself. One of the greatest challenges most of us face is finding ways to make an income that doesn’t cause greater harm to our world or ourselves. Capitalism flourishes when others and the earth are exploited. Understanding your identity through how you choose to engage, disrupt, or re-invent the exchange of labor and goods may be a central theme in your life.”

There are never guarantees, but four years of some success lets me believe I can pick up where I left off and continue building my work. I’m considering the restaurant job a 4-month detour on the way towards whatever is meant for At Heart.